Tales From the Crib

by Jennifer Coburn

  I slipped out of the restaurant without saying good-bye to anyone, knowing exactly how my well-intended brood would handle Jack’s disappearance. They couldn’t conceive that a thirty-nine-year-old woman could find her way home alone, so we’d spend a half hour in a conversation that would have me begging for a noose. It’d go something like this:

  ME: I’m going to get going now.

  IDA: (Looking around) Where’s your husband?

  ME: Oh, Jack had to go to the gallery. I’m going to take the train back home.

  IDA: You’ll do no such thing! Izzy, tell her she’ll do no such thing.

  IZZY: Listen to your Aunt Ida. (It’s always been commonly accepted that Ida and Izzy are my aunt and uncle, though they are really cousins of my Uncle Irving.)

  IDA: The trains are dangerous for a young girl. Your cousin Richard will drive you.

  ME: That’s very sweet, but really not necessary.

  IZZY: Don’t tell your Aunt Ida what’s necessary, big shot. You’re a mother now.

  BERNICE: What’s all the commotion ovah here?

  IDA: Richard offered to drive Lucy home, but she refuses to ride with him.

  BERNICE: Well, if Richard’s going that way, Lucy, why be such a big shot? Richard, mamaleh, come here.

  RICHARD: (Clueless) Bernice, I’m so sorry.

  BERNICE: You don’t need to apologize. It’s Lucy who’s being rude.

  RICHARD: Why, what’d she do?

  ME: Hello! I’m right here.

  RICHARD: What’d you do, Lucy?

  IDA: She refuses to drive with you!

  IZZY: Says it’s not necessary.

  IDA: She’d rather take the subway than be in a car with you, I guess.

  ME: Richard, this has gotten out of hand . All I said was that it wasn’t necessary for you to drive me home. I can take the train. It’s not even a subway. It’s a nice, clean train.

  IDA: You think my Richard’s car isn’t clean?!

  IZZY: My boy is as clean as they come!

  IDA: Mr. Big Shot had to leave in the middle of a funeral to do his music deals, and leaves his wife here to take the subway home alone.

  FERN: What’s all the mishegas?

  IZZY: She refuses to ride in a car with Richard. Says he’s dirty!

  FERN: Dirty?!

  ME: I never said he was dirty! I said thank you, but I could find my way home. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.

  BERNICE: It’s no inconvenience. We’re family.

  RICHARD: Hey, doesn’t she live in Jersey?

  ME: Yes, I do!

  RICHARD: I live in Queens.

  FERN: Close enough!

  IZZY: He’s angry about being called dirty! Who can blame him?

  ME: I didn’t say he was dirty.

  RICHARD: I’m not mad, but it is kind of out of the way.

  IZZY: They are horrors! Ever since we stopped having the cousin’s club, they forgot they were family.

  RICHARD: She said she can take the train.

  IDA: She’s just saying that.

  ME: No, I’m not.

  IZZY: You’re a pregnant woman!

  ME: No, actually I’m not.

  FERN: Don’t be a schmuck, Richard. Take your cousin home. It’s not too far for you.

  RICHARD: I don’t think she wants the ride!

  ME: I don’t!

  FERN: Don’t be a moron. You’ll put a little Purell on your hands after you get out of the car, and you’ll be fresh as new.

  Instead of enduring some variation of this, I slipped out the door and decided to take a walk through Central Park. I don’t know why people say New Yorkers are unfriendly. Bikers smiled as they zipped by me. The Sabbrett’s vendor jovially tempted passersby with promises of the best hot dog they’d ever eaten. Even the hardest vogue bitch stopped to snap a photo of tourists when she was asked. As I walked past hundreds of people lounging on beach chairs and blankets in Sheep’s Meadow, I heard the familiar clopping of horse hooves behind me.

  When I was a kid, horseback riding was my sport. I was shuttled to every competition in New York state by my father in his yellow Gremlin. A holdout from the hippie era, my father probably always imagined I’d take up noncompetitive rock collecting or something equally peaceful (and inexpensive). Instead, I dragged the poor man to equestrian clubs, one more posh than the next. He didn’t complain, though looking back I realize the entry fees and private lessons probably matched the rent on his Brooklyn studio.

  As I heard the sound of hooves hitting the ground, I felt my youth behind me, which in the height of coincidence, was exactly what it was. When I turned to look at the horse, I immediately recognized the rider. It was none other than Richie Cantor, my apparently not-so-dead college love.

  Chapter 33

  “Richie?” I said, standing in his path.

  “Holy shit, if it isn’t Lucy Klein. How the hell are you?” His smile was contagious. I self-consciously attempted to turn down the wattage on my own smile, knowing I was too happy to see him again.

  Richie wore jodhpurs and a blue blazer over a white button-down top, which I couldn’t help thinking must’ve been miserably hot. On his head, he wore a black velvet helmet with the strap hanging loose. I imagined someone made him wear the helmet, but he immediately unstrapped it upon leaving her sight. God, he looked good. Like a men’s cologne ad. I looked at him carefully, trying to decipher whether he really looked as sexy as I thought, or he just looked good compared to the dead guy I thought he was for the past few months.

  “I can’t believe it’s you!” I said softly as his horse halted. “I thought you were, you were- ”

  “Dead?” Richie raised his one eyebrow. How did I forget that cute gesture?

  “Yes!” I said, too excited.

  “Nah, managing a hedge fund,” he said, smiling. “Mom and Dad got a lot of sympathy cards outta that one, though. Never knew I had so many friends at Michigan.” He shrugged and exhaled a tiny snort.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, looking up at him. The sunlight poured in through the leaves, creating a halo effect. He looked like a mythological character ready to scoop me up and return me to my past. As if he was reading my mind, that’s just what Richie offered.

  “Hop on,” he said, patting the front of his saddle. “Let’s catch up on what’s been going on.”

  Without hesitation, I climbed on. I wanted to ask why his obituary appeared in the alumni magazine, what he’d been doing with his life for the last fifteen years, and whose rules he was breaking by unfastening his safety helmet. But not before I drank in the uninterrupted pleasure of feeling his familiar thick arms wrapped around my waist. My back rose with the tension of attraction, then I leaned into him, hoping my attempt to melt into him wasn’t too obvious.

  “Last I heard you were working on some sort of novel,” Richie said. I immediately regretted sending in the questionnaire to our alumni magazine. Seven years ago, I got this wild idea that I’d write a historical romance set in seventeenth century Italy. I remember the day exactly. I’d just seen a play about—guess what—a tragic love set in war-torn seventeenth century Italy. All morning at work, the only thing I could think about was this novel I was going to write. During our staff meeting, my co-workers brainstormed ideas for roach killer while I quietly jotted notes for my outline of the book. It was going to be one of those books where the lives of eight separate characters are painstakingly dissected. About three-quarters of the way through the story, I would bring them all together for a tragic climactic chapter that centered around some horrible battle where half the characters ended up dead or maimed. I spent an extra-long lunch hour at the library researching the period, then stayed up late that night developing character outlines. The next day, I received a letter from the University of Michigan alumni magazine asking what I was doing. In a state of over-exhausted frenzy, I bragged that after graduating from Michigan, I stayed in Ann Arbor to earn my MFA from the university. I was writing (clear throat and sit erect) a novel.
I wrote some other pretentious drivel, hoping to communicate that my novel would be terribly important and incredibly literary. The problem was that about a week after I sent my masturbatory note, I lost all interest in the book. Until Richie mentioned it, I hadn’t realized the alumni magazine even printed my pompous update.

  “Oh, the book was never for publication,” I said. “It was more of a, of a- ”

  “Thing for yourself?” Richie asked, trying to help me complete the thought.

  “So what about you?!” I turned and smiled, hoping that asparagus only affected the smell of pee, not breath. “You’re obviously not dead. How did that get printed anyway?”

  “Different Richard Cantor,” he said, resigned. “Same class and everything. The obituary said the guy was from South Bend, Indiana, but I guess folks didn’t get that far into it. My parents got like a hundred cards.” He laughed. “Didn’t you see where they put a picture of the guy in the next issue? My mom called the alumni office crying that she couldn’t write another letter clarifying that her son was not dead, so they printed a follow-up.”

  “Wow, Richie. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who can actually say that rumors of his death were highly exaggerated.”

  “I know.”

  “So, you haven’t been decomposing. What have you been up to?”

  Richie looked at his watch and said he had to be back at the stable in a few minutes but would like to catch up with me more over dinner. Now, there’s dinner and there’s dinner. I’ve never been one to flatter myself, but I definitely got the impression that he wanted dinner. Still, you can’t presume. Even if you’re absolutely correct, the person can shoot back, “Jeesh! I just wanted to catch up with an old friend over a meal. In case you haven’t noticed, you currently weigh slightly more than a side of beef. Sex with you was the last thing on my mind. I just thought it’d be fun to see just how much food you can put down.”

  “Um, dinner?” I repeated, biding for time.

  “Yeah, dinner,” he said, not giving me any hint of his real agenda.

  “My husband might get kind of jealous,” I said, hoping to address the issue without actually bringing it up.

  “So don’t tell him,” Richie shrugged. “I’m sure as hell not going to tell my wife.” He winked. Well, at least I knew what I was dealing with now. A definite dinner.

  “Oh,” I said. Timing was a cruel thing. For more than a year, I was free to pursue a relationship with Richie. Admittedly, it would be an affair, but at least I wouldn’t have been cheating on my own husband. A year ago I was so angry at my lot in life that I probably would have done it, justifying that I deserved a little fun with someone else’s husband. I would have told myself that I didn’t even know her, and if she couldn’t keep her husband faithful, that was her problem, not mine. I’d imagine that she’d gained weight since she married Richie. I’d say the poor dear became a bore and lost sight of her dreams and her goals. She sat around the house all day in her tattered pajamas wiping baby snot from her son’s nose. Then I remembered that this image was, in fact, me. All my life, I had watched Anjoli change married lovers with the seasonal styles. She once even joked that men with wedding bands were “the new black.” I remember vowing that I would never have such reckless disregard for other women, and that no matter how great the temptation was, I’d stay away from their husbands. And yet a few months ago, I would have gladly had dinner with Richie Cantor because I was famished. It’s like those people who have to survive together for a month in the Arctic and wind up cannibalizing each other. If you rewound the clock and visited them in their cozy homes before their excursion, each would swear he’d rather die than eat another human being. A short month later, one of the elders would keel over and the rest would fight over who got the ribs. But I wasn’t in the Arctic Circle any longer. I wasn’t at Club Med either. But where I was there were snacks, so the insanity of starvation didn’t overrun me. Sure, Richie Cantor’s familiar body looked great. Okay, it felt like heaven and smelled like chocolate cake too. (Then I remembered it was actually me who smelled like the cake from Rita’s luncheon.) I loved riding on Richie’s horse, harmlessly flirting and recapturing a small piece of my past. But I honestly didn’t want to take it to the next level. Dinner was not a real temptation at this point. Timing is a wonderful thing sometimes. It can save us from ourselves.

  “What do you say?” Richie said.

  I dismounted from the horse and gave my old boyfriend a friendly pat on the thigh. I had a dozen retorts, all branding him a scumbag. The funny thing about having a mother who engages in despicable behavior is that it makes it difficult to judge others too harshly. If I called Richie a scumbag, that would make Anjoli one too. Conflicted as I am about my mother, there is no question that I love her. To think of someone else calling her names—though I’m certain there are dots all over the tristate area map where women gather to do this regularly—brings marbles to my throat.

  “I think we’ve caught up enough,” I said.

  He looked puzzled, as though women don’t often decline his dinner invitations. Especially heavy women. “You sure?” he said. “Could be fun.”

  I smiled, not because I was flattered by the persistence, but because I realized that I was quite sure.

  “Richie, it was great seeing you,” I said, and meant it, though not in the way he probably thought. “I really have to get home now. I have to pick up my son at a friend’s house and get dinner on the table for my husband.”

  Richie shrugged. I was not his first dinner invitation and I wouldn’t be his last; my declination was more of a bothersome amusement, than anything else.

  “Lucy, Lucy! There you are,” my Aunt Ida shouted as Richie waited on his horse in front of Tavern on the Green. “We wondered what happened to you, mamaleh.”

  Richie glanced over at my family, then waved at me. “You ever change your mind, I work downtown at- ”

  “Ida!” I shouted to interrupt. Today, I was feeling noble and pure. Knowing where Richie worked was information I didn’t need. Another day, it might prove too tempting. “Ida!” I ran and hugged her. “Do you think Richard could give me a ride home? Jack had to run to the gallery and I don’t want to take the train.”

  “Of course, mamaleh!” She embraced me. “It’s been such a hard day for everyone. Give Tanta Ida a hug.” I buried my head in her enormous bosom until I heard hooves gallop into the distance. “Richard!” Ida shouted. “Richard!” This time louder. He appeared slowly, battered by a lifetime of his mother’s requests. “Richard, you’re driving Cousin Lucy home to New Jersey. Clean that filthy car of yours and bring it around in ten minutes. We’ll wait out front for you.”

  Chapter 34

  Bernice went on a shiva cruise in August after she was mugged in a supermarket parking lot a week after her sister’s funeral. Shiva is the weeklong mourning period in the Jewish faith where family and friends sit on wooden boxes, drape black covers over mirrors, and bask in discomfort. It’s basically the deceased’s way of saying, You think you’re uncomfortable, try death, big shot. It’s the ultimate in one-upsmanship. Legs hurt? I only wish I had pain ʼcause it would mean I wasn’t dead, you selfish schmuck! Of course, as in all religions and cultures, there is contradiction, such as the lavish bagel and lox spreads brought in by Sheppy’s. We Jews believe in a lovely catered meal for the grieving family—as long as their asses go numb from sitting on crates. Suffer but eat well!

  Shiva cruises recently became popular. In a way it makes sense. If you’re grieving the loss of a loved one, prepared meals, maid service, and the company of other mourners can be of great comfort. On the other hand, shiva is all about discomfort, not pinochle and shuffleboard.

  A week after Rita died, Bernice was still having her happy breakdown, as her kids dubbed it. Sadly, she was the ideal target for a mugging—an elderly woman carrying on a conversation with herself in a parking lot. She was laughing at one of Rita’s jokes when a woman approached her and asked directions to the ba
nk. Bernice supplied them in excruciating detail. “You turn left at the light. I’m not sure what the street name is, but there’s a Lincoln-Mercury dealer on the corner. Irv and I bought ours there, and he always said, ‘Bernice, make sure you come here to get the car serviced because these people know how to fix a Lincoln.’ And I always have. So after you pass the dealership, you’ll pass a Subway sandwich shop, a 7-Eleven, and a clothing store for ladies’ plus sizes.” Mind you, these were just shops the woman would have to pass. The woman didn’t have to make another turn for six blocks.

  The woman thanked her, then offered to help load her groceries into her car. “How nice of you, but I can manage,” she said. As soon as her back was turned, the woman pushed her to the ground and tried to grab her purse. I say tried because Aunt Bernice landed right on her own pocket book, so the woman couldn’t snatch it. Soon a getaway car came to pick up the thwarted mugger and left my aunt on the ground of the parking lot. “All my life I’ve been trying to lose weight,” Bernice told people who scurried to her aid. “Today I was glad for my fat tuchus. It padded my fall nicely.”

  The people who witnessed the mugging told the police officer that my aunt was punched in the face, but she insisted she wasn’t. “Can you describe the woman?” the officer asked.

  My aunt thought about it for a moment. “She was a very elegant lady with the most exquisite hat. I thought she was coming from church with a hat like that on. All those feathers. In this heat, you have to be pretty devoted to wear a hat like that.”

  The officer was puzzled. “Black, white, Hispanic? Hair color? Eye color? Young or old? Any tattoos or birth marks?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about any of that,” my aunt apologized.

  “You don’t know if she was black or white?”

  “She was a black woman, but don’t just run out there willy-nilly and pick up the first black lady you see. Sometimes that happens and I don’t want to see any more problems between the blacks and Jews,” she said, smiling as though she weren’t offending the officers. “Please, I don’t need Chaka Khan stirring things up.”